McCreary has found himself wondering if that’s even the first-order problem. “Too often we think of engagement as this transactional thing where if instructors ‘give’ active learning they will ’get’ engagement in return,” he wrote in a recent post on LinkedIn. But engagement strategies only work, he wrote, if students “feel like you genuinely care about them as whole human beings, not as one-dimensional ‘learners.’”
In a comment on McCreary’s post, Haider Ali Bhatti, a Ph.D. candidate in the University of California at Berkeley’s interdisciplinary science and math education program, known as SESAME, wrote that most instructors do care about students. Perhaps the problem, he wrote, is that they don’t always know how to show it in the professional environment of the classroom.
“I feel like we create these learning environments where showing our own emotions, especially as they relate to our students, somehow tarnishes the ‘I gotta keep things professional’ atmosphere of classrooms,” Bhatti wrote. “There’s obviously a line we have to maintain, but too often, we stand so far from it that students are bound to disengage despite all the ‘cool’ active learning.”
That comment led to an interesting discussion among teaching experts about what it means for instructors to show students they care. Much of that discussion involved McCreary, Bhatti, and Sarah E. Silverman, a freelance instructional designer who teaches disability studies. Here are some highlights from what they shared on LinkedIn and in follow-up conversations with me:
Care is an ethos, not an add-on. When professors add expressions of care to their courses, they’re often one-off statements or activities that feel divorced from the broader framing of the course. McCreary wrote: “I’ve seen intro modules for online courses with a discussion board that asks students to post a picture of their pet snake and then the very next page talks about how their A cuts off at 89.51% and PLAGIARISM IN THIS COURSE WILL NOT BE TOLERATED.” Care can’t be sprinkled in on top of content, and certainly not among policies that seem to communicate the opposite. Part of the problem, he wrote, “stems from our thinking of engagement or care as an add-on rather than an ethos.” He continued, “I’d like to reframe teaching *as* an expression of care.” This idea, Silverman pointed out in a comment, tracks with a piece she wrote several years ago on how basic-needs statements work together with what else is communicated on a syllabus.
Caring about versus caring for. In an interview, Silverman described a distinction between caring for students and caring about them. There are certainly cases of professors caring for students, offering support and advice as they face personal challenges. But not every professor-student relationship is at that level — and it doesn’t have to be. What students need from all of their instructors to support their learning is the feeling of being cared about. Professors don’t have to know anything about individual students’ circumstances to express caring about them. It can be conveyed in flexible course policies that account for life circumstances affecting, say, students’ abilities to meet deadlines. And it can be conveyed in thoughtful disclosure, Silverman said. For instance, Silverman’s students — many of them mothers themselves — know that she has a young child and is balancing work with other responsibilities like they are.
Care without burnout. When professors create a supportive environment, when they disclose just a bit about themselves, students don’t have to reveal their personal lives in order to seek support. In a sense, showing students you care about them can reduce the need to care for them. If you have flexible deadlines, for instance, students might not feel they need to share the personal reason why they could use an extension. Teaching is relational work. But, McCreary wrote in another LinkedIn post, “we can express a deep and profound sense of care for students without necessarily forming deep personal relationships with them.”
Bhatti, McCreary, and Silverman gave me a lot to think about — especially against a backdrop in which so many students seem to be checked out from the work of their courses and so many instructors seem worn out from trying to meet their needs. I wonder if anything here has resonated with you. Have your thoughts on what it means to show students you care changed over time? Have you found ways to express care to them without depleting yourself? Share your thoughts with me at beckie.supiano@chronicle.com and they may be included in a future newsletter.
You can’t opt out of caring
When I spoke with Michael McCreary about the LinkedIn discussion on caring, he emphasized that his thinking has been influenced by the work of sarah madoka currie, a freelance writer who wrote her dissertation on how caring classrooms can be a form of anti-suicide care.
So I interviewed currie, and I asked her to share a few key points from her work:
- “You have to love students enough to choose them even when no one chose you.” Professors might not have felt cared about when they were students, she said, but they can teach differently than they were taught.
- “When you cast care as this unnecessary indulgence that people can choose to participate in or not, but in the same breath, condemn students for failing their projects for not caring enough, or not caring about this class, it’s kind of ironic.” It’s hard to blame students for not caring if they don’t have a reason to believe the instructor cares.
- Caring is part of the job of teaching. “There’s no opt-out to caring about students,” she said.
Learn something new
In a recent advice piece for The Chronicle, Rachel Trousdale argues that professors can become better teachers if they push themselves to learn something new. Learning as a novice, she writes, is a different experience than the kind of learning professors engage in at work, where they build on their existing expertise. And it’s one that’s more similar to what they’re asking of their students.
In the piece, Trousdale, a professor of English at Framingham State University, describes learning to sew — a process that required her, she writes, to do things she is bad at.
“That experience — with its attendant frustrations, satisfying successes, and embarrassing failures — reminds me of things I need to do, and do better, in the classroom,” she writes. “Things like providing scaffolding for students to help them identify the right next problem to solve, and to see the possibilities once they’ve solved it.”
Trousdale’s essay made me wonder: Have you recently learned a new skill that didn’t simply draw on your existing strengths? If so, do you see a connection to what your students experience in the classroom? And has that led you to make any adjustments in your teaching? How do you support your students as newcomers to your field? Share your example with me at beckie.supiano@chronicle.com and it may be included in a future newsletter.
Thanks for reading Teaching. If you have suggestions or ideas, please feel free to email us at beth.mcmurtrie@chronicle.com or beckie.supiano@chronicle.com.
-Beckie
As always, nonsubscribers who register for a free Chronicle account can read two articles a month. Your readership supports our journalism.
Learn more about our Teaching newsletter, including how to contact us, at the Teaching newsletter archive page.
